Screening The Deer Hunter for the first time caused StinkyLulu to develop an attitude problem. See, StinkyLulu finds it just creepy and annoying that "one of the most important and powerful films of all time", before it's even 1/4-way done, stages not one but two separate scenes in which a blonde in a pink bridesmaid dress gets punched in the face. As a device -- perhaps -- to demonstrate the brutality of life on the "homefront" the blonde-punching might make a certain kind of sense...a certain kind of gratuitous, hyperbolic and misogynist sense. (We won't get into how lazy it is that, even as Cimino lugubriously details the distinctive "pain" of each of his 6 or 7 male characters, the female characters are basically old bats, drunk sluts, catatonic brides or designated punching bags.) But, then again, everything about Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter is gratuitous, hyperbolic -- and, on those infrequent occasions when Cimino pauses to think about women at all -- "punched up" with misogyny. Just pisses StinkyLulu off...'specially when one of those punching bags just happens to be...
approximately 30 minutes and 56 seconds
25 scenes
roughly 17% of film's total running time
Meryl Streep plays Linda, the girl caught between her devotion to her fiance Nick (Christopher Walken) and her attraction to his incredibly hot (nsfw) best friend Michael (Robert DeNiro), both of whom -- as the movie begins -- are readying for tours in Vietnam.25 scenes
roughly 17% of film's total running time
The character of Linda is barely a character at all. As scripted, she's little more than the all-purpose movie "girl" -- the good girl, the girl at home, the kind of girl a guy marries, the girl whose picture the fighting soldier holds close to his heart, the girl who writes the "dear john" letter, the girl who works at the market in the hometown that never feels like home again to the returning veteran, the girl that got away... Linda's an archetype, a symbol, a stock character drawn in bold, unoriginal strokes. That is, until an emerging actress named Meryl Streep took the role.
Meryl Streep does more than spin gold from straw in her performance; Streep retrieves a fully-inhabited characterization from a role that's not so much a character as a pathetically underconceptualized plot device. Through the forceful clarity of her performance and the (mostly wordless) chemistry she establishes with DeNiro's Michael and even a little bit of goofiness, Streep's Linda becomes one of the most vivid presences in Cimino's film.
Truly, Streep acts her butt off in this thankless prop of a part. Her Linda is beautiful, gentle, a little bit dangerous and absolutely riveting. What's more, even though I'm left with no idea “who” Linda is, Streep’s emotional intricacies make me care about Linda anyway. I may not understand "who" Linda is, but I have no doubt "that" she is a living, breathing, complicated woman. Hers is a curious accomplishment. She's in the film, but somehow not of the film.
Streep's performance as Linda proclaimed her arrival on the screen as perhaps THE film actress of her generation. Her performance is vastly greater than the role, more emotionally substantial in some ways (at least for StinkyLulu) than the film. And while StinkyLulu somehow, for some reason, stops short of loving the performance, this much is clear: Meryl Streep's admirable and memorable performance as Linda in The Deer Hunter proclaimed her arrival as an actressing force to be reckoned with.
Now, if only she had punched back...
